


Of the Music of Hobbits

by NebulousMistress



Series: The Red Book [12]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s04e11 Be All My Sins Remember'd, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-03 17:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17288627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: Music is a creative force.Music is a destructive force.





	1. Creation

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties have been taken with the episode. But then, liberties have been taken all over.

It was impossible.

They'd been at this for two days straight. No sleep, nothing but power bars and stale coffee to keep them going and they were getting desperate. They didn't have time to sleep. They didn't have time for this to take so long. They didn’t have time to come up with a new plan. It was this or the Replicators would overwhelm them, would sterilize the galaxy in their attempt to starve the Wraith into submission.

They had no choice. No other options. No room for failure.

Dr. Radek Zelenka and Dr. Rodney McKay worked frantically through day, night, and day again. Military action against the Replicators demanded it.

“Já jsem šel šilhavě,” Radek mumbled. He slammed his laptop shut with a satisfying bang. “I cannot see straight,” he said. “I am too old for this. I am taking break.”

Rodney hummed and waved absently.

“I will return in three hours,” Radek continued. “Then we may continue. Or I will find you passed out on lab bench. Again.” He left, exhaustion dogging his steps.

Rodney sighed.

His plan was doomed from the start if he couldn't get this working. It was just a simple cube of inert nanites, why wouldn't they maintain cohesion? The plan was simple, deceptively simple. Assault the Replicator homeworld with everything they had, beam the block down to the planet amidst the chaos, set off the bonding program, run away. With the entire Replicator fleet on and around the planet they could take out the entire lot of them with one block. But they couldn't get the block to maintain cohesion long enough to be useful.

It kept melting into a puddle of confused nanites and he couldn't understand why.

It was this code, it had to be. But the code looked fine! That was the problem, the fact that he knew Replicator code like a fifth language. He wasn't fluent, he couldn't dream in it, he didn't think in it, everything had to be translated in his mind before he understood it. There were nuances he just didn't get, strings that made no sense, context that didn't help, he hadn't been studying Replicator code long enough to really learn the language.

Rodney groaned and slumped over, letting his head drop into his arms on the lab bench. He needed sleep. He needed to eat. He needed ideas that weren't exhausted. He needed Todd, the Wraith could think in Replicator code, hell he could speak it, sing it!

Sing...

Rodney looked up unseeing at the control consoles of the Replicator lab. He had a terrible idea. He got up and started fiddling with controls, wondering if it might work.

He cringed as the console let loose with a screaming hiss that nearly tore through his sanity. He turned off the sound and tried to shake the sudden headache away.

“Ow,” he said to no one. But that meant...

It would work...

Rodney ran from the nanite lab, back to his quarters. There was a time and place for truly terrible ideas and this was it.

He came back with the translation hardware everyone called his 'roll-up piano'. He shoved everything off of a bench, ignored the crash of glass and the crunch of plastic, and unrolled the hardware. Then he put his hands on the hardware and thought about Replicator code.

An unholy hiss filled the room, a single tone with nothing underneath it. That was what a blank screen sounded like. He started adding if-then statements, testing the hardware.

The silence was broken by lilting shrieks underneath the hiss as he coded through sound every student's first program, the 'Hello, World' program.

Rodney finished the simple program and stepped away from the hardware. He went over to the console and told it to translate what it had heard. 'Hello, World' displayed in several languages, Ancient and English and Scriniarii and Wraith and Czech and French and Genii and...

“This will work,” he said to no one as he mentally locked the door. He ordered the console to translate sounds back into Replicator code and went back to the translation hardware.

The others would rue the day they dismissed this beautiful piece of technology as a simple 'roll-up piano'.

*****

Rodney slammed his fist down on the hardware and screamed in frustration. A horrifying shriek echoed around the room, his voice and the Replicator code mingled in unholy union. He stepped back and the sound stopped; he took a deep shaking breath as he tried to reign in his frustration. The damned cube had melted again, still refusing to maintain cohesion. 

It was like he was trying to make the code do something it was never designed to do.

Such a feat required someone fluent in the code. The translation hardware helped but it was still a translation, still without nuance or proper context. He leaned against a bench and stared unseeing at the blank white sheet unrolled on the lab bench.

Not what the code was designed to do...

The code was designed to make thinking, moving, Ancient-shaped Replicators. Servants who could judge and decide and speak. Slaves who would obey unquestioningly. Perfect little mirrors for the narcissistic Ancients who twisted the proto-humans of Earth into their image. Automatons who wore elven faces, made to perform tricks for their uncaring shadowed masters...

Rodney shook his head. He was exhausted and his thoughts were getting weird. But he couldn't sleep now. Zelenka would be back at some point and besides, he knew that if he slept now the nightmares would be weirder than his current thoughts and he didn't want that. There was enough weird in his mind, didn't want any more.

Not what the code... was designed to do...

It would be much easier if he stopped resisting and let the code build what it wanted to.

But that would be... dangerous...

He could make it less dangerous... Maybe even... safe?

He cracked his knuckles and laid his hands back onto the translation hardware. The sound for 'New Program' ripped into his aching head.

He closed his eyes and imagined he was playing the piano, creating with music. He knew what he wanted and the piano would make it for him. It would be easy this time, so much easier than trying to force ebony and ivory to do the work for him under judging eyes and sneering faces. So easy...

The hiss of the empty screen began changing, statements and variables and functions all adding notes to the symphony. It would be human-form, small and unassuming. Unthreatening. The nanites would go inert if cleaved from the mass, rendered safe. The nanites would be unable to replicate, unable to repair damage, unable to form a new mass.

It would be willing. It would see the necessity of this course of action, wouldn't protest its destruction at the end of its purpose.

It would be logical. It would understand the logic of the situation.

But exhaustion added its own clauses, notes slipping into the symphony that Rodney didn't catch.

It would be female. He always wanted a daughter.

He wanted it to like him. He wanted it to like people, want to save them, want to fulfill its purpose.

It would understand human fragility, humans aren't strong like metal, there are necessary organs without backups, visibly minor damage can result in the death of the entire organism.

It would be helpful, complicit in its own destruction. He wouldn't have to worry about it running off and hiding among its own kind, trying to escape its fate. It would welcome its purpose, its fate, its destruction.

It would... be pretty...

Rodney fell to his knees before the lab bench, too tired to stand. He curled up in a corner of the lab, wrapped his arms around himself.

It was no use. He was too tired to do this. Zelenka would be back at any moment to yell at him for trying. Carter wouldn't allow a human-form replicator to exist. If Sheppard were here he'd have been able to talk him out of this. It was a stupid idea. It wouldn't work anyway. He buried his face in his knees. A single sob of frustration escaped before he could stop it.

He didn't hear the footsteps.

“Hello.”

Rodney felt his blood run cold as he looked up at...

She was beautiful. She was exactly what he'd pictured in his mind. Well, almost, she wasn't blonde at all. But... it worked.

It worked!

She knelt down next to him. “Hello,” she said again.

Rodney looked at her, saw his vision blur as he blinked away tears. “I forgot to give you an eye color,” he said randomly.

She cocked her head, looking at him with eyes that swirled gray, the nanites that built her clearly visible to any who looked too close. Then she smiled. She wrapped her hands around his wrists and gently pulled his arms away from him, wrapping them around her. She snuggled up to him on the floor and closed her eyes. “I am... awake,” she said. “Thank you.”

Rodney pulled her into his lap and held her close. He'd done it. He'd...

What...

What had he done?

*****

Major Evan Lorne found the door to the nanite lab locked. He mentally queried the city and got an image of Dr. McKay curled up in a corner. He pounded on the door. “Dr. McKay!” he called. “You all right in there?”

No answer.

Lorne waved his hand irritably over the crystal chime. Nothing happened.

Fine. Lorne shut his eyes again and queried the city, asking for an override. Nothing happened for the longest time and then the door slid open. He went in. “Doc, you okay in here?” Lorne asked.

Then he stopped and stared.

“Hello.”

Rodney huddling on the floor, shoved up into a corner like he was trying to hide from the world. But he wasn't alone. There was a woman wearing eerily blank clothing with weirdly perfect skin and hair. He had his arms around her and was holding her close like some sort of security blanket.

That was bad enough. But then Lorne saw her eyes. She blinked up at him, movements just a tad too slow to be normal, and her eyes swirled with gray nanites. His hands moved of their own accord, one to his sidearm, one to his radio. “Colonel Carter, we have a problem,” he said. “Nanite lab.”   


Then Rodney looked up and everything got worse. He pulled her close, protecting her with his own body as he bared his teeth in some sort of primal challenge. 

“We have a big problem,” Lorne said, lowering his weapon. But he kept it at the ready.

Soon after came the sound of feet pounding in the hallway. Half a squad of marines stood outside the door as Colonel Sam Carter stepped in and stopped mid-stride. “Oh my,” she said.

Rodney glared at Carter, not letting go of his creation. “Hello,” she said. Her voice was maddeningly cheerful despite the situation.

“Who are you?” Carter asked.

The Replicator laid her head against Rodney's shoulder. “He made me,” she said.

“I see that,” Carter said. “I need to talk to him. Can you let him go?”

The Replicator let go of Rodney. He didn't let go of her. She looked up at Carter, smiling.

“McKay, I need you to let go,” Carter said. "Now."

Rodney slumped against her then let go. He sighed and stood up. The Replicator made a move to follow but he stopped her with a hand on her head. “Stay here,” he said before following Carter out of the nanite lab.

“What did you do?!” Carter demanded as soon as they were in the hallway. She didn't care that there were half a squad of marines around them.

“What I had to,” Rodney snapped.

“You 'had to',” Carter said, arms crossing over her chest. She fixed him with a glare.

“Look, we need a nanite mass to carry the kill-code, right?” Rodney said, trying to make her see. “We tried, oh we tried to get the machine to build something simple, a cube, a block, a bouncy ball, whatever, it wouldn't do it. We'd stripped so many parameters out of the build that the mass couldn't hold form and the nanites all lost cohesion. There is nanite dust all over that lab. We'll all need to decon after this.”

“You need a decon now,” Carter said.

“I know, I know, but that was the thing. The machine wouldn't build outside its parameters and I couldn't change them so I used them instead. That Replicator in there can't replicate. Any nanites that fall off immediately go inert. The ones left can't repair damage. She's safe.”

“'She'?”

“Fine, it, it's safe, happy?” Rodney snapped.

“Not really, no,” Carter admitted.

“Well I had to do it,” Rodney defended. “I had to Sing her here. I had to Sing her alive.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait, 'sing'? ‘Alive’?! Rodney... go decon and get some sleep. We'll dispose of the Replicator and--”

“No!” Rodney shouted. “You don't understand! I couldn't get the code right! I had to Sing the code. I Sang the code and it worked! She's perfect! This'll work. Trust me, Sam. Please.”

Carter looked at him with something akin to exhaustion and pity. “Rodney...”

“Look, I admit, I've been awake a while. But I know that room's under surveillance, I set it up myself as soon as we knew what this lab did. I'll decon and get some sleep if you promise me you won't hurt her.”

Carter's shoulders slumped. “Rodney...”

“Please, Sam, for the plan to work...” His face fell as he realized what he was saying. “...she has to die...” He stepped back into the nanite lab and saw the Replicator standing in the corner where he left her. She smiled at him. He waved in response. “I have to kill her...”

He didn't resist as he felt Carter's hands around his shoulders, pulling him back out into the hallway. She let him fall against a wall. His knees gave out and he slid down to sit on the floor, staring straight ahead. “She has to die,” he whispered.

“You knew that when you created it,” she said. “You knew it was going to die.”

Rodney shivered. He knew, he knew all along, but he didn't want to know. He didn't want it to be true. He created her, dammit, he shouldn't be the one to send her to her death!

“I'm ordering you to decon,” she said. “You've been working in a nanite lab completely dusted with dead nanites. You were in physical contact with an active Replicator. I don't care how inert you say it is, you broke protocol.”

Rodney nodded. “Just let me...”

"Fine," she said. She waited while he slowly stood up. “You really couldn't get it to work any other way?”

Rodney shook his head. “I tried,” he admitted. “I tried for days. I tried so many ways. The code just doesn't work that way.”

Carter looked like she'd bitten something distasteful. “If it makes a move my men will put it down,” she said. Rodney looked like it was his own life that had just been saved. She hated the utter hope in his eyes. “Make sure it understands.”

Rodney went back to the nanite lab.

The Replicator still stood in the corner. She hadn't even shifted position. Rodney went up to her, completely ignoring Lorne's protest, and took her hands in his. “I'm going to be gone for a few hours,” he said. “I'm human, you know what that means, right?”

The Replicator cocked her head. “It means you need to consume chemical energy and shut down to process information,” she said.

“We call it 'food' and 'sleep', but yes,” Rodney said.

There was a commotion out in the hallway.

“Okay,” she said. “I will stay here.” Then she paused and looked at the doorway.”Oh, hello.”

“Oh my...”

Rodney looked over to see Zelenka back from his own nap, eyes wide and mouth agape. Rodney leapt at the opportunity. “This is Doctor Zelenka, he'll be here while I'm gone.”

“Doctor… Zelen...ka...” She pondered the name. “What is that?”

“That's his name,” Rodney said.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Doctor McKay.”

The Replicator pondered this. “Do I have a name?”

Carter shoved her way into the lab and started making all the silent 'no' motions she knew of.

“Do you want one?” Rodney asked.

The Replicator nodded.

Zelenka looked back and forth between Colonel Carter and Dr. McKay and knew nothing good was about to happen. “Perhaps...” he began.

“Fran,” Rodney said. “Your name is Fran.”

Fran smiled and hugged him.

Carter glared silent death at Rodney.

Rodney pulled out of Fran's embrace. “I'll be gone for a few hours,” he said. “But Zelenka's working on our project, too. Maybe you can help him out.”

“I'd like that,” she said. She moved to a laptop and opened it. She laid her hand on the keyboard and the password seemed to enter itself.

Carter grabbed Rodney by the arm and dragged him out of the lab. “Decon now,” she growled. Once in the hallway she slammed him into the wall. “Have you gone mad? You don't name those things. You're already attached to it, you think a name is going to make this mission any easier?!”

“It's not a real name,” Rodney defended, desperately trying to put together some justification. “It's, it's... it's an acronym. Friendly Replicator ANdroid. FRAN. See? Not attached.”

Carter took a deep breath and let it out like an angry hiss. “I don't like this,” she said.

“Yeah well how do you think I feel?” Rodney demanded. “The first thing in my life I manage to Create with music I have to destroy.”

“Decon, then sleep, then food,” Carter ordered. “In that order.”

“Could I eat after decon too?”

She glared at him and pointed down the hallway. Rodney left, slinking off like he finally realized he'd done something wrong.

Carter looked in on the nanite lab and the Replicator FRAN typing away at a laptop. She called Lorne to the doorway. “If it threatens anyone,” she said.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Lorne said.

“Otherwise let it alone. If McKay's right we may need it.”

“With all due respect...” Lorne said.

“I've seen McKay worse than that, too,” she said. “And he was right then.”

“You don't think he really Sang it into being, do you?” Lorne asked.

Carter looked at the translation hardware still rolled out on a lab bench. She recognized it as the roll-up piano. “I don't know what to think anymore,” she admitted.


	2. Destruction

John Sheppard watched the screen before him. This here was the capstone to a horrible day. First the Wraith then the Travelers then Teyla and now this.

The screen showed the nanite lab and its current inhabitants. Zelenka worked off to one side, typing on his laptop while he spoke to someone who wandered the center frame. She ran one hand over the equipment in the lab as though learning it for the first time. Rodney’s roll-up piano lay discarded on a table, she drew fingertips along it as though trying to make it produce a sound. Nothing happened so she moved on to a closed laptop.

“This is  **NOT** what we talked about, Rodney!” Sheppard shouted.

Rodney wouldn’t look at the screen or at Sheppard. Instead he seemed to focus on a spot on the table. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry,” he said. “But the block idea didn’t fly. This was the only way.”

“Do you have  _ any _ idea what kind of a security threat that is?” Sheppard demanded.

“It’s not as bad as you think!” Rodney finally looked up, an odd haunted guilt on his face. “I stripped down her programming as much as I possibly could without sacrificing basic viability. She can walk, talk, but she can’t replicate or change her form or anything!”

“Does she know why she was created?” Carter asked.

“Of course,” Rodney said.

Carter didn’t want that answer. “Then she has a certain amount of self-awareness.”

“Yeah.”

Carter scowled. The pride in Rodney’s voice was not helping. “In that case, you realize we’re sending her to her death.”

Rodney’s pride faded into something terrible. He’d known this but knowing and hearing it spoken aloud were two different things. “I know,” he said, eerily subdued.

Sheppard looked at the Replicator on the screen. He saw Major Lorne in the background with an anti-replicator weapon in his hands. He idly wondered where Lorne got such a weapon, usually the SGC kept a close handle on those. “Can it die?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Carter asked.

“It’s a machine,” Sheppard said. “Its consciousness is just a bunch of ones and zeroes. It’s a thing, a prop. A really advanced radio controlled weapon.”

Carter pondered the screen, the Replicator on the other side opening a laptop. She laid her hands on the keys and the screen lit up, allowing her access. Carter glanced at Rodney.

“At the end of the day it doesn’t matter,” Rodney said, resolutely not looking at anyone. “We don’t have any other choice.”

“We  _ are _ teaming up with the Wraith,” Sheppard allowed. “I guess it’s that kind of a mission.”

On the screen Fran looked up, her brow furrowed. She said something to Zelenka which brought him over to look. No one wanted to see his hands curl around her shoulders as she began pointing out lines of math.

It was easy to ignore.

On the screen Zelenka tapped his radio and Rodney answered.

*****

It felt like a war council.

Rodney took a deep breath as he explained the plan to the assembled. Ellis and Caldwell sat next to each other, Ellis’s discomfort with the situation written on the tense lines of his face. The Wraith known as ‘Todd’ seemed interested in his eternally detached and slightly amused way. The Traveler Larrin watched with keen interest, though she seemed more interested in Rodney’s ears than his words. Sheppard’s easy tension could be attributed to the rest of the room and the situation.

Only Carter seemed interested in the science behind Rodney’s plan. Fran found the weakness in their initial plan, the Replicator’s likely adaptation to their new situation before collapse could take the mass. It was her suggestion to detonate ZPMs around the mass in a symmetrical pattern, the force of the explosion compressing the mass to fusion.

“The whole planet’s going to be destroyed in the process,” Rodney said, finishing his presentation.

“You don’t mess around, do you?” Larrin said appreciatively.

“All this is based on information provided by a Replicator?” Ellis asked. “We have no reason to trust it.”

“We’re not trusting it, we’re trusting…” Sheppard paused. He didn’t like the idea any more than Ellis did but he knew Rodney well enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. And this time they had warning that the planet was about to be destroyed. “...Rodney.”

Carter gave him a look of sympathy.

“Now this causes a slight wrinkle in the plan,” Rodney admitted. “I’ll need to beam down to the Core Room.”

“Along with Ronon and a squad of marines,” Sheppard said quickly.

Rodney scowled at him but accepted the enforced security. “From there I should be able to hack into their systems and set the Zed-PMs to overload.”

“In the meantime, we’ll be keeping their ships occupied,” Carter said. “The seven hives will space themselves around the planet equally and our smaller ships will fill in the holes.”

“I could use you in my Chair, Sheppard,” Larrin said. “We have an arsenal of drones but none of my guys can fire them quite like you can.” She let her eyes rake over Sheppard with a leer.

Sheppard had the feeling she only wanted him for his ears. He glanced at Carter who gave him a disapproving look. He shrugged and gave Larrin a calculating smile. “No place I’d rather be,” he said, matching her leer with one of his own.

“The hives will be dispatching sizable waves of Darts to target the Replicator’s hyperdrive engines,” Todd said.

“My 302s will join you,” Caldwell offered.

Todd inclined his head in pleased agreement. “Very well.”

“Now, while I’m working in the Core Room, we’ll beam Fran down to the city,” Rodney said.

“Wait a minute,” Ellis said. “‘Fran’?”

“It’s, uh…” Rodney tried to remember the justification for her name. “Friendly Replicator ANdroid.”

Sheppard glared at him. “I didn’t realize we were  _ naming _ things.”

Rodney blushed but silently dared anyone to question him. Carter rolled her eyes as the others looked to her for advice but she offered none. “All right, let’s move out.”

*****

As the meeting ended Rodney fled the conference room, laptop in hand. Ellis didn’t remember McKay having a laptop in the meeting but when compared to the other transgressions he’d witnessed today it was minor. “A word, Sheppard,” Ellis said as he stood.

“I think we did pretty well,” Sheppard said defensively as he stood as well. “Fourteen against 32 isn’t great but it’s better than laying siege to a planet. They don’t even trade, what’s the point.”

“Not that,” Ellis said. “I’ve worked with worse odds. I’m talking about McKay.”

“I trust him,” Sheppard said. “This isn’t the sanest I’ve seen him, I admit, but I trust him.”

“You let him create a Replicator!”

“Let? What ‘let’? I was out getting ships for  **your** army!”

The conference room was not empty in the slightest. Rodney may have fled but Larrin paused halfway to the door to watch, Todd hadn’t moved from his seat, Caldwell pretended he wasn’t hearing this, and Carter stood up to retake control of this meeting. “Gentlemen, we can discuss this later,” she growled.

“This is not a discussion,” Ellis snapped. “You’re as at fault!”

“McKay uses that damned piano to play a Replicator into existence and it’s my fault?” Carter asked.

“He did not ‘play’ anything into existing,” Ellis ground out, as though he could make the words true if he simply used enough force. 

“The roll-up piano?” Caldwell asked. “Wait, he used music to create her?” Ellis and Carter both glared at him, the closest to a straight answer he expected to get.

Larrin’s veneer of detachment fell as she turned a calculating look on Sheppard.

“Whatever you choose to call it,” Carter said, voice raised to keep control of the room. “The Replicator exists. Ancient translation hardware was used in its creation. The same hardware McKay uses to play music below the waterline in the East Pier. Arguing over semantics isn’t going to change that.”

Ellis glared but he wasn’t going to win anything here. “The situation has gone too far,” he said. “You all know it. Things should never have been allowed to go this far.”

“Should we have, what, pulled the whole plug as soon as things got a little weird?” Sheppard drawled. He tucked a lock of hair behind one ear for emphasis. No matter what happened out here he’d never be able to permanently return to Earth, not without surgical intervention. “If the SGC feels we violate their ‘delicate sensibilities’ then they should never have encouraged us.”

“I have no doubt General O’Neill is sorry,” Carter said, deadpanned. “But what’s done is done. The best we can do is mitigate the damage. Which means continuing this in my office!”

Ellis took a deep breath. “There’s no point,” he said. “You know of my objections. But after this mission, do not expect the _ Apollo _ to return to the Pegasus galaxy.”

“Duly noted,” Caldwell said, sounding far too calm for comfort.

Ellis glared down at Caldwell, the one man he might have hoped would agree with him. Instead Ellis found his anger met with thinly veiled amusement. Ellis stormed out of the conference room.   


“If he’s going to be a problem,” Carter began.

Caldwell dismissed her concerns with a flick of one wrist. “He has his orders,” he said. “He’ll follow them. There will be no problem.”

Larrin left the conference room, stopping at an alcove off of the main corridor. She leaned against the wall and pondered what she’d just heard. The Genii stories were beginning to make twisted, horrible sense. And now Dr. McKay had Sang a Replicator into existence to use as a weapon.

The Genii would know the basics soon enough. But, she wondered, how much would they pay for the details?

*****

The  _ Apollo _ sped through hyperspace to the Replicator homeworld. They seemed alone, isolated in their hyperspace bubble. But the sensors told another story, constantly warning of proximity to other hyperspace bubbles of odd configuration. Wraith hives, Traveler ships of various age and configuration, and the  _ Daedalus _ all flew with them toward what might be certain doom.

Colonel Ellis didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. At most the ground team was a distraction, more likely they were all going to end up dead.

He didn’t believe for a second McKay’s plan was going to work.

“ETA six minutes.”

Ellis nodded at his navigator and tapped his own radio. “Dr. McKay,” he said. When he got the acknowledgement he continued. “We’re approaching the target. You need to get with Ronon and the marines.”

“On my way,” was Rodney’s answer. Then the comm went silent again.

“Be ready to fire on the Replicator ships the moment we drop out of hyperspace,” Ellis said.

“Yes sir.”

Ellis looked out at the swirl of blue and not-blue simulated on the viewscreen. A window would be too impractical, too prone to decompression, useless across the distances of space warfare. Worst of all, the swirls of blue and not-blue could be nauseating to look at.

Ellis pretended he’d never read reports to the contrary.

*****

Rodney tapped his radio off. They were out of time. He and Zelenka had done all they could, collected all their tricks, and now it was time. He needed to get down to the staging area where Ronon and his marines waited. They wouldn’t have more than a few seconds to beam into the Replicator city before the battle began. 

The arms around him gave him pause.

Fran laid her head on his shoulder as she hugged him. “Good luck, Dr. McKay,” she said.

Rodney took a deep shuddering breath. “You too, Fran,” he said. “Good luck.”

She pulled away from him and smiled before walking out the door to her own staging area. To her doom. To the doom she accepted, even relished. ‘One always wishes to fulfill one’s purpose’, she’d said with a quiet happiness.

He was sending her to her death.

“You need to go,” Zelenka said from his laptop.

“I know,” Rodney said. He didn’t move.

“McKay!”

Rodney moved, grabbing his laptop and heading to where Ronon waited.

Soon it would be over.

*****

“This won’t take more than a minute,” Rodney promised.

The Core Room was empty, nobody guarding the ZPM controls. The Replicators were busy with the space battle above. Ronon and his marines took the corners of the room, their Anti-Replicator Guns held ready. Rodney stood in the center, his tablet connected to the Replicator mainframe. 

If he focused on that he wouldn’t have to think about her.

If he ignored the shifting mass of the city he wouldn’t have to realize: she was already dead.

Rodney opened a comm channel through his radio to the entire fleet above. This was important information, they all needed to hear it. “It’s working,” he announced. “Just hold those ships a little longer.”

Radio chatter echoed in his ear and he winced. Caldwell sounded far too calm as he announced they might not last long enough. Larrin sounded more realistic as she shouted orders to Sheppard to take down that ship before it escaped. He heard Major Marks on the  _ Apollo _ announcing they couldn’t take much more of this.

“It’s working much faster than I ever imagined,” Rodney said, not sure if his words would be helpful. It wouldn’t be long now. 

The city began to shake, the planet shuddering beneath them.

“Son of a bitch,” Ellis said, audible over the open channel. “He actually did it.”

“What’s happening?” Ronon demanded.

“It’s the Replicator mass,” Rodney said, nearly shouting over the radio din in his own ear. He couldn’t celebrate yet, they still had to blow the ZPMs. “It’s so heavy it’s sinking into the planet’s surface.”

“McKay, according to our readings every Replicator nanite is now part of the mass.” Sam’s voice sounded so much farther away than just high orbit. “Can you confirm?”

“Copy that, Sam,” Rodney said. “I’ll set the countdown--”

The lights went out.

“Did you do that?” Ronon asked.

“No,” Rodney said. Then it hit him. “No, no no, no it’s the mass! It’s collapsed the subterranean power grid. It’s a total blackout! We’re not gonna be able to overload the ZedPMs!” The room shook again, only this time it wasn’t the planet’s crust buckling. This time the Replicator mass heaved the crust around like a bad movie monster. “Not good, not good, not good!”

“Do you want me to beam down there and help you?” Carter offered.

“The power grid’s destroyed, there’s nothing either of us can do!”

“What’s the big deal?” Sheppard sounded distracted, the way he always tended to when attached to some Ancient tech. The fact that it was the Chair on a Traveler ship didn’t seem to matter. “If you can’t overload the ZPMs why don’t we just send some nukes down there and get this over with?”

“It’s not as simple as that!” Rodney paced the Core Room, keeping his feet below him even as another tremor threw the marines to the floor. “Look in order to implode a mass this large the explosion has to be timed down to the nanosecond. The force needs to be exactly right. I mean, you can’t just fire a few nukes down here and get the job done.”

“It’s gotta be better than nothing,” Sheppard said.

“I have to agree,” Caldwell said.

“Sir, I have something!” Marks shouted.

“What is it?” Ellis demanded.

“Colonel Carter, the planet’s mantle,” Marks called over the open comm. “It’s rich in neutronium.”

“Neutronium?” Caldwell asked.

The Core Room shifted again. Rodney decided he must have imagined the twisting shatter of metal in the distance. Fran wasn’t supposed to beam down anywhere near here. The mass was supposed to be mindless. It shouldn’t be coming this way.

“It’s the base raw material in Replicator cells,” Carter said. “It makes all the sense in the world why the Ancients would set up on a planet where it’s abundant.”

“Neutronium is incredibly dense…” Rodney mused aloud.

“And that helps us how?” Sheppard demanded.

“Sam, we are geniuses!” Rodney shouted. He started talking aloud as his fingers flew over his tablet. “Okay, the mass is so super-heavy that it’s sinking into the planet’s crust. If I dial it up a little bit it’ll attract the neutronium in the mantle and sink into the core.”

“And the planet will exert enough pressure on it to cause an implosion.” Carter sounded almost proud of their idea.

There was one problem. Rodney’s tablet beeped, such a small sound to inform him his program wasn’t going to work. Replicators didn’t work that way.

“Dammit!” Rodney shouted.

“Dr. McKay?” Caldwell asked.

“I have to,” Rodney said ominously.

“McKay?” Sheppard asked. It sounded almost like a threat.

“I’m sorry, I have to.”

“McKay!” Sam shouted.

He wasn’t sure why they were shouting. This had worked so well the first time. Fran was proof enough of that. He reached over to where the tremors had slid his pack and pulled out his roll-up piano. He unfolded the device on a console, turning it on with a thought. The Core Room computers recognized compatible technology and pulled at him. He allowed the link, connecting the Ancient translation hardware with the Replicator mainframe.

“You brought that?” Ronon asked. “Why?”

“I need everyone to clear this channel,” Rodney warned. “I need radio silence. Otherwise this isn’t going to work.” Then he laid his hands on white glass.

An unholy hiss filled the bridge of the  _ Daedalus _ , of the  _ Apollo _ , of Traveler ships and Wraith hives listening silently to information they would all sell and barter and embellish later. That hiss grew, turning to a wail, a scream, a symphony of a thousand lines of code all coalescing into a program.

Larrin stood in something she refused to admit was fear. One thought ran through her head.  _ The landbound idiots were right. _

Ellis held his hands over his ears, trying to hold in any sounds of discomfort. He was never coming out here again.

Caldwell looked in shock at his own bridge crew. Only Carter seemed unfazed, instead she scowled as she recognized the sound of Replicator. She opened her mouth to say something but Caldwell held up one hand. Rodney had demanded a clear channel. Clearly he thought they’d all disconnected. They shouldn’t break the illusion.

Todd stood in the Queen’s Antechamber of his hive and purred as he heard the Replicator’s code sung in its own language. It was a sound he’d never heard while awake but one he understood. It was a simple command meant to convince the Replicator nanites they were low on resources and needed to seek out a new source of neutronium, the neutronium ore in the mantle of the planet.

Replicator code sang through the comm system, through the Replicator Core Room, through the tortured minds of marines who curled up on the heaving floor with their hands over their ears. Even Ronon backed away, face twisted in pain.

And somehow, somewhere in the middle of the nanite mass, a single program among countless confused fragments of code accepted the ‘seek resources’ command. It sang back its acceptance, a tiny bell-like tone beneath the program’s own echoing tune.

Then it was gone.

All of it.

The silence was deafening. 

The faraway sound of tortured metal faded away. Marines uncurled, hands falling cautiously from their ears. Ronon looked at Rodney with a newfound fear. Ellis sat in shock on the bridge of his ship. Carter scowled and reached into a pocket of her jumpsuit for a folded note to hand to Caldwell. Caldwell accepted the lost wager though he did not feel triumphant. Todd began to laugh as he issued commands to his hives.

Rodney stood, eyes closed, arms loose as his sides. That tone, that single soft note in the darkness… He clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle the sob that threatened to turn into a scream.

Then the room shifted violently and he shook off the thought. “We need to get out of here!”

Ronon shook off his concern. Get out now, think about it later. Or never. “Let’s go,” he commanded. “Come on!”

The marines got to their feet as Rodney pulled the translation hardware away from the console in a hard-disconnect, yanked his tablet’s cord from the access port, and tried in vain to stuff things into his pack. He didn’t get the chance, holding it all awkwardly as the room lurched and shuddered and disappeared in a flash of transporter light.

When the light faded he found himself on the  _ Daedalus _ bridge. “Much as I’d love to we shouldn’t stick around and watch this go down,” he warned.

“The planet’s become unstable,” Carter warned. Below the planet began to change, fractures spreading along its tectonic plate boundaries. 

“All ships, jump to hyperspace,” Caldwell commanded. “We’ll meet at the rendevous point.”

Traveler ships blinked out one by one, each jumping away from the planet that began resurfacing itself as it imploded. The  _ Apollo _ jumped away. Wraith hives veered off into the Void. And then it was gone, lost in a swirl of blue and not-blue.

It was over.

She was gone.

*****

“Everything you create is used to destroy,” Rodney muttered to himself.

“What’s that?” Sheppard asked.

It took a moment for Rodney to realize it really was all over. The Replicators were destroyed. The Wraith were back to being enemies. M7R-227, the planet the Ancients called Asuras, had just been removed from the Ancient database. While the planet itself might still exist for now it was slowly collapsing under the newfound gravity caused by the collapse of the neutronium already laced through its mantle and the Replicator nanites that probably by now had coalesced back into a single consciousness. A brain the size of a planet, unable to affect the universe around it as it slowly imploded into a ball of neutron-dense matter surrounded by an empty shell of rock.

Atlantis’s control room seemed back to normal. The  _ Apollo _ may have bugged out as soon as the battle was over but the  _ Daedalus _ stuck around, its crew taking advantage of what amounted to an impromptu shore leave. Zelenka was down in the Nanite Lab overseeing the final decontamination. Carter stood overlooking the control room like a bird of prey, like she claimed ownership of something that wasn’t hers. The gate was active, a gate team coming in smelling like they'd been out riding birds.

Yet despite it all Rodney couldn’t help thinking of Fran. If only his piano teacher could see him now. He’d show that old biddy what ‘creative musical talent’ meant. He’d created with music, all right. A sentient, sapient…

And he’d…

He looked down at his hands. “I killed her,” he said.

“Hmm?” Sheppard asked.

“I killed her,” he said again, this time with more volume. “I created her. I  **made** her. I Sang her into being and for what, to send her to her death?!”

Sheppard took a step back. Rodney was on his feet now, arms out for a hell of a screaming rant. But this rant wasn’t one that should be had. Not here.

Maybe not ever.

“You programmed a Replicator,” Sheppard said. “That’s it. You didn’t Sing anything. You didn’t create anything. You programmed a Replicator and that is  **all** .”

“But--”

“No.”

Rodney glared at Sheppard and refused to budge. Sheppard hadn’t been there. None of them had. He Sang her into existence and no mere argument would convince him otherwise.

Or anyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/) where you can find a hundred little fanfics I never posted here. Check it out, drop a line, maybe dare me to write something for you.


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